Chuck,
You know a heck of a lot more than I, but I was told by the tour guide that they can control the temp -- from cooling to heating -- to get 'optimal' aging from their bottles. I didn't inspect their system, and it is very possible that the tour guide was wrong, but he did tell the group that they can heat and cool the warehouse.

Funny thing for me is that it actually made me think less of the place. In fact, most of my tours (Wild Turkey Excluded), left me with a much less romantisized view of the whole bourbon industry.

There are many fans of Woodford on this forum, but I am not one of them.

Me as well. Interestingly, in Ontario, $40 could get you Knob Creek, Bakers, Basil Hayden, Woodford Reserve, Buffalo Trace or Elmer T. Lee. Out of that group, I'd get ETL every time. With ETL (and Bakers) now discontinued, it would be a toss-up to me to get BT, KC or WR with BT leading by a nose.

Chuck,
You know a heck of a lot more than I, but I was told by the tour guide that they can control the temp -- from cooling to heating -- to get 'optimal' aging from their bottles. I didn't inspect their system, and it is very possible that the tour guide was wrong, but he did tell the group that they can heat and cool the warehouse.

Funny thing for me is that it actually made me think less of the place. In fact, most of my tours (Wild Turkey Excluded), left me with a much less romantisized view of the whole bourbon industry.

I know for a fact that they don't artificially cool the warehouse but they do control the temperature by turning the steam heating system on and off. The high temperature in their cycle is 85 degrees fahrenheit, so they are actually adding heat for most of the year. During the hottest part of summer they may "cool" it by opening the windows and running some fans, but that's about it.

It might make you feel a little better about this process to know that it was invented and patented in 1874 by E. H. Taylor, who built those beautiful limestone buildings at Woodford in 1890, so this is actually pretty authentic, old time stuff. The warehouses are very well insulated (unlike the typical steel clad ones) specifically so this process can work. That site, down in that valley, doesn't get the temperature swings some other warehouse sites do, which is why the heat cycling has long been desirable there.

I didn't even know that Woodford was made from Pot still or mostly from pot stills, but I really like Hirsch and that's from pot stills and I don't have anything good to say about Woodford, so I guess for my part I can't blame the pot stills.

I know next to nothing about the copper pot stills or how copper interacts with bourbon in a chemical sense, but my impression/wild guess was that perhaps the early batches of Woodford pot-stilled bourbon were leaching a lot of copper out of the stills, but eventually the stills would become 'conditioned' or somehow less able to influence the bourbon, and we might then be able to truly appreciate pot-stilled whiskey. Anyone know anything about this? Am I way off the mark, or will the copper eventually be less pronounced as the stills get 'worn in'?

Woodford is the Bourbon of the Month, That's hilarious and we have a post with all these complaints about it.

Sijan, I thought people were saying the earlier batches of WR were better than the current product? So wouldn't the breaking in the stills help the current batches? Hell, what do I know? Or would the copper exposure help the bourbon?

Woodford is the Bourbon of the Month, That's hilarious and we have a post with all these complaints about it.

Tim and everyone,

The Bourbon of the Month is in no way an official endorsement of a product by Straightbourbon.com, nor is it typically a popularity contest, voting instances aside. What we try to accomplish is informative and provocative discussion focused on a single product at a time. This is not only interesting banter for those involved today, but creates a more complete archive of information for those who follow later. Most of the BOTMs have been chosen because of there relative availablility to most of our members. That obviously won't always be the case as we move forward, but we'll try.

FWIW, the current discussion of WR has already brought up some interesting observations regarding pot-still operation, copper leaching, aging concerns and that, as Chuck pointed out, WR will never be 100% pot-still whiskey.

Sijan, I thought people were saying the earlier batches of WR were better than the current product? So wouldn't the breaking in the stills help the current batches? Hell, what do I know? Or would the copper exposure help the bourbon?

The earlier batches of Woodford were not made with the copper pot stills. The whiskey made from the copper pot stills had to age for about 6-7 years before it was ready for bottling. But Brown-Forman needed a product to sell in the meantime, so they made the early batches of Woodford Reserve with honey barrels from Old Forester that had been aged at the Labrot & Graham (now Woodford) Distillery in their last few years.